Have heard all the jokes about recognizing bear scat, that Grizzly scat has bells in it, but what do you guys and gals use. Will definately carry bear spray, heard udat was the best. But would a whistle around your neck to blow everyonce in a while work or perhaps sound like a dinner bell. Being from florida, alligators and sharks don’t bother me, been around them all my life, but just not familiar with Grizzs.
Having actually used pepper spray on bears and watched a multitude of serious problems caused by it… I will not bother again. It is less than useful, dangerous to people and not particularly so to bears. I have several stories about personally-witnessed failures…
I regularly fish in bear country, even posted a couple pictures from last week’s bear, some of which were at 15 yards. If you need bear protection you need a firearm, period. Handguns are better than nothing, but no substitute for a real gun. Unless you are comfortable shooting a monster handgun (VERY few are) the best bet is a slung,
short 12 gauge shotgun.
art
I have a 24" Mossberg 5" pump but don’t think I can take that into yellowstone, oh well, if I see one maybe they don’t like southern fried redneck.
Hap,
As you’re probably well aware, US national parks are off limits to firearms. So what would do you suggest for that scenario? While you describe the “perfect” bear deterrent, pepper spray must certainly be the next best thing. Of course there are suggestions as to avoiding confrontations in the first place.
Mark
Well, the best bet would be to avoid getting into a situation where you need to use the OS option. Step one is to PAY ATTENTION to what is around you and what you are doing. In all the years I have lived and worked and played in the woods, including four years around Yellowstone, I NEVER have been in a bad situation with a bear.
And, frankly, the odds of you getting attacked by bear, unless you are doing something stupid, are so slim as to not be worth worrying about. Worry about a car accident, falling in the bathtub, clogging your arteries, or all the other ways people actually die. Amazingly, one never sees discussions in here about how to avoid a drunk driver on the way to the river. Or about bees, which kill far more people every year than large carnivores. Or white-trailed deer.
I always advise against carrying a handgun (aside from the legal issues) because, frankly, 95% of people wouldn’t be able to recognize the situation, draw the weapon, and get off a shot before they got flattened anyway. And of the ones who did, few would hit the bear. It takes training to be able to use a handgun instantly and effectively, and nobody who doesn’t get paid to do so trains that well.
DG
Where do you get off using reason?!? Bears are emotional issues and logic is off-limits! 
I am in agreement with you in many ways… Right up to the paid for proficiency thoughts… I know far more individuals that shoot seriously and are NOT paid for maintaining their skills, that do so. I hunt and fish with a number of cops and many are simply borderline competent with a handgun. Annual certifications and such are no substitutions for gun looniness. 
One friend shoots a 500Smith and Wesson revolver better off the bench at 100 yards, than many I know can do with a rifle and irons. Under 2" groups!
My experiences differ from yours in a few ways. But I go out of my way to confront bears on a regular basis. I guided photo safaris for bears and many hunting trips. I know I have skinned over 100 bears. Two have died literally touching me and a few more have died trying. I am neither afraid of, nor disrespectful toward them. They are quick and powerful.
I also see and watch more bears in a year than most active outdoors folks will see in a lifetime. I have watched more than 100 different bears in a single week many times. Last fall I counted 26 Kodiak bears from one spot. ADF&G says there are only 150 bears in the whole unit I saw them in, BTW, and I was looking at a tiny portion of the whole unit.
Right now your chances of having an AK bear problem are greater than they have ever been. More bears and more pressure on them coupled with a paradigm shift in attitude where those in charge of the assylum believe we can all just get along. It ain’t workin’! We have had several maulings so far this year including a couple last week.
I seldom carry anything. Bears have lousy poker faces. A few pointers… Most charges are bluffs. Noisey bears do NOT charge. Back out before they get quiet! Posturing, standing on hind legs, hackles raised and ears up or out are good signs. Pacing with ears back and hackles down are very bad signs; leave now! I have been bluff-charged many times to what most would consider ridiculously short range. Because the bears showed they were just nervous they got away with it. Had they put ears back it would have been very different.
As to carrying in nat’l parks, check out this information http://www.nraila.org/news/read/newsreleases.aspx?id=10651
for an update. Several important things happened this summer, especially the SCOTUS decision in Heller vs DC. The courts now hold we have a Right to self-protection and firearms ownership. That puts the fed ban on firearms into the unconstitutional range. You will soon be allowed to carry in parks, guaranteed. Contact your senator if you think it is a good idea…
art
Mark
Having seen bear spray applied into the wind and because I have grave concerns for the mechanical aptitude of most folks i think more will get hurt by it than helped. I doubt it is even terribly effective against two-legged predators, a more common concern in my opinion.
I have seen two bears properly and liberally doused with spray. Neither situation was resolved by spray and more effective, and final, means were required.
I have seen a guy spray himself directly in the eyes in his fear. I have seen people “spraying” a bear just walking by… at about 75 yards. I have seen a guy get shot in the small of the back with a half-empty canister that went off in his fanny pack. The blisters extended down the insides of his thighs and included sensitive scrotal tissues!
Firearms or actually using your wits is my thought.
art
The difference between training and no training is in the ability to react to the stimulus of a bear (or bad guy) coming at you. Most people simply do not react to a threat like that with instant lethal force. There is a period of assessment, and a period of “This can’t really be happening!”. And it is VASTLY different being on a range in a shooting scenario when you KNOW you are going to have to draw and shoot, than walking down a trail having a chat with a friend and switching instantly to shooting at something. It HAS to be a reaction, it can’t be something you think about during the process. And most people, given a handgun, are about as accurate with it as they are with a baseball. Hap and others with his experience know exactly what is happening, but Joe fisherman has no clue. People who are trained and/or experienced enough to do what needs to be done are not generally the ones asking questions about bear spray and such.
Frankly, the same thing applies to pepper spray, but at least with it you are not quite so likely to blow your own foot off or accidentally shoot your fishing buddy in the back (he should be running away and letting the bear eat you, after all).
And if you DO have time to psych yourself up, draw and ready the weapon, and calmly aim, you had time to get the heck out of Dodge.
PS, and we all CAN get along with bears. Worked for Treadwell, didn’t it? 
For the record, I think we need more people eaten by bears, mountain lions, and small rodents, not fewer. Would teach us that we are not necessarily the top of the food chain and that other animals have to dance to our tune.
Cheating again! You continue to use logic and reason and I will refuse to argue with you!
A year or so ago a guy was walking in an area within the city limits where there have been two recent maulings. For some reason he had carried a big handgun that day. When the brown bear came at him he dropped it in a flash with a single shot to the neck at staplegun range. He claimed to have surprised himself.
Someone had legally shot a moose and left the gutpile right close to the trail. An entrailed trail should be the one less traveled…
Hap,
I am asking because you have more experience with bears than most anyone I have talked too.
You don’t believe in bear spray for grizzlies, I however will not be fishing within grizzly range. I have seen 3 black bears while fishing in the last 2 years. Before these I have never seen a bear in the wild before. All three have been benign and wanted to leave my presence as quickly as I wanted them too. I have also had a close encounter with a dog that I would rather forget. For over a hundred fishing days I have had 3 (two bears where on the same day) close encounters with other predators, for these odds carrying a gun just isn’t worth the trouble but I would like some protection. In your opinion, would spray be a viable alternative in my situation? Or, do you think spray is better than nothing?
Thank you for an honest opinion.
I have no faith in spray and believe it can make the situation far worse for you. Most folks are not continually aware of which way the wind is blowing. If the bear is downwind of you (and therefore sprayable) he will have scented you and left. If he is upwind he is not sprayable and more likely to bump into you in surprise.
Keeping an eye on the wind involves little effort… but not much less than paying attention to everything else and that is the most important part of bear safety. I have spent and spend a lot of time around black bears, too.
I would not carry spray again, period… Unless it was on city streets with rampant predator problems!
art
I know down wind from up wind, deer hunted most of my life and probably set out 3000 decoy spreads in my life shooting mallards. However, my question was, is noise the best deterent in the woods for bears, meaning whistling, singing, occasionally shouting. There are such things known as cross winds and a bear could stumble on you from the side. I guess if I walked up on a bear with a carcass off the trail which I could not see or smell, he good get territorial in a hurry, hell my dogs do around their food. Since a 44 is out of the question, want to fish, not worry about getting fined and bailed out of jail, I would rather have something in my hands bear spray rather than my johnson. Just my thoughts have been diving and if sharks show up around the wreck we get out the water, just like you don’t swim in creeks you don’t know during gator mating season. Probably have nothing to worry about, but as I said this southern boy is not familiarized with Grizzlys.
A lot of people carry bear spray in YNP. I can not off the top of my head remember hearing anyone using it in YNP though. I am not even trying to second guess Hap, he has far more experience than I do, but I do know a few guys who guided in Alaska and do carry spray in YNP. As others have said, using common sense and doing what you can to prevent an encounter is always far more effective than spray. Where in YNP are you planning on fishing?
Would you be more or less watchful and careful if you had a can of ‘bear-be-gone’ spray with you? Than again, many places out there sell those cute little ‘bear-bells’.
Shacked
My point about the wind is simply the most likely time to need the spray is the most likely time to not be able to use it effectively. Hunting requires much wind consideration but fly fishing is more about the water.
A couple more bear facts since you just had to mention your buddy Johnson… Here in front of me as I type this there is a black bear “bone” (baculum to be precise) from a male bear of about 6’, a big mature AK mainland bear. Beside it is the same OE part from a boar brown bear of about 8 1/2’, a mature Kodiak bear. The black bear bone is about 8 1/4" long with pronounced sweep and heft. The brown bear bone is about 4".
In perspective, brown bears have a chip on their shoulders… and for good reason!
If I really feel I need to go somewhere and if I also feel I need to pack a gun to be safe I will pack it. If the law says I cannot be there with a gun I will not substitute a can of spice. I am also not geared toward randomly breaking laws. If I really felt I needed a gun to be safe and it was illegal I would probably go elsewhere and be every bit as happy.
As I stated earlier, however, the innate right to self protection is going to start making things change rapidly.
J Castwell makes a good point in at least two different ways and I am not sure which was intended… if not both. False security in a spice can could cause grief if you really needed protection… Buuuuuuuuuuuttttttt if you really didn’t need it and it made you feel better…
art
BTW I will be out of here for a couple weeks as I head to Kodiak in the morning.
art
Be careful out there, hope you don’t run into that brown bear with the inferiority complex. Hap, hope I didn’t sound anti-gun, have had firearms my whole life, and when I take my trip cross country will have a couple with me, just don’t want to have any hassles with wardens in National parks. Probably making a big to do about nothing, but the only thing we have to worry about in the florida woods is rattlesnakes and pissed off wild hogs, had some tree me a couple of times deer hunting, their mistake, they ended up barbqued.
take care
Shacked
I would like to add that if you carry something (anything) for protection from bears, cougars, or (the scary species) humans, you need to PRACTICE with it. This includes pepper spray! It’s difficult to find practice pepper spray bottles, but they ARE made…they are used for police and firefighter training, and contain only water.
This happened a couple years back to my neighbor, and I posted it here on FAOL. If she had practiced in advance with the pepper spray, it likely never would have happened:
http://flyanglersonline.com/bb/showthread.php?t=9974
DANBOB
This brings me to my usual correlation between “don’t feed the bears and welfare”. Those that get it, get it. Those that don’t never will…
On one episode of Dog the bounty hunter, Dog’s brother had his mace go off in the car. Imagine if that happened to you with bear pepper spray.
I live in hunting country. We have both a spring and a fall black bear hunting season. The bears for the most part are afraid of humans. In 1974 they created some no shooting areas near the provincial parks around some of the smaller lakes. It was found that the no shooting areas were the areas where bear problems became the worst. In the following years some of these areas were dropped as no shooting areas and made simply no hunting areas you can now legally fire off a gun there but cannot target animals. Once guns were again in the picture the bears became less of a problem once more.
It was the discharge of firearms that said to the bears Humans are dangerous leave them alone.
One of the very best improvements in this area was the invention of truly bearproof garbage cans.
Garbage bears are always the most dangerous.